“Draw Something” – a sort of virtual Pictionary in which users post doodles on Twitter and Facebook – fell out of favor faster than many pop songs. Zynga purchased Omgpop, the company that created the game, in March. It scored 50 million downloads in its first 50 days. But the game’s monthly average usage dropped by 1.6 million players in the last seven days, according to the most recent figures from AppData.com. (Zynga did not respond to requests for comment.) “Game apps have a questionable lifecycle,” says Rick Summer, an analyst at Morningstar.

If the novelty factor wears off for some players of social networking games, it can have a nasty domino effect, analysts say. “What gets people to play a game initially and what keeps them playing are often not the same thing,” says social psychologist Matt Wallaert. Word-of-mouth about a fun new game does not mean people will keep thumbing, he says. Zynga’s popular “Words With Friends” proved to be the exception as it appeals to millions of adults who already like to do crossword puzzles and play Scrabble, Wallaert says; plus, the game was also given an extra publicity boost recently when Alec Baldwin was bounced off an American Airlines plane for playing it before takeoff.

App stores also work like record charts of yore, experts say. Once a game falls out of the Top 20, it’s difficult to climb back up the chart. People who are looking for game apps tend to go for bestsellers, says Scott Sutherland, analyst at Wedbush Securities. Otherwise, consumers have difficulty finding them. In fact, chart placement is so important to the success of apps that Apple recently warned developers about trying to artificially manipulate the rankings. He says games like “Angry Birds” by app developer Rovio became a mega-hit because it climbed into Apple’s Top 10 iTunes chart and managed to stay there. The iTunes store alone has over 100,000 game apps.

Unlike games produced for Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation consoles, experts say game apps tend to have less room for improvement. More complex gaming consoles like “Call of Duty” and “Grand Theft Auto” are easier to refresh or upgrade and more conducive to cool graphics, Summer says. Rockstar Games, which makes “Grand Theft Auto,” has been improving its graphics and complexity since it was first introduced in 1997, he says. The most successful interactive mobile game, “Angry Birds,” on the other hand, has only been on the market for three years.

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